The Challenge

The challenge was to reach out to new audiences without alienating the Royal Opera House’s current attendees. The brief was to create a campaign that would make everyone feel that the Royal Opera House was accessible to them.

The Campaign

We created a new extraordinary world for each of the Royal Opera House seasonal programmes of events.

Autumn 2012

Winter 2012

Spring 2013

Summer 2013

The aim was to create compelling stories through imagery that would resonate with people and communicate the magic of the Royal Opera House experience.

Each piece of creative was used as the front cover for the Royal Opera House’s booking period brochure...

...and then rolled out over a variety of formats, Outdoor, online and in print

The Creative

Our vision was to create a series of magical, extraordinary worlds that would allow us to bring opera and ballet together in a new sphere or space.

We used a fashion aesthetic as an access point for people unfamiliar with the Royal Opera House.

What happens on the Royal Opera House stage is extraordinary, we wanted the creative to give audiences a taste and to invite them to come and experience it for themselves.

“It’s a real privilege to work with the Royal Opera House – a dream job. It is challenging work but genuinely inspiring and hugely rewarding.”

Matt Dixon, Creative Director

Final artwork

Concept

Extraordinary worlds

Autumn Season

Autumn Season

Production designer Daryl McGregor built a set on which we brought together the archetypal and well-known characters of the minotaur and a swan from Swan Lake.

The iconic figures were designed to speak to new audiences, with additions such as bottles from The Elixir of Love included for recognition by existing Royal Opera House audiences. Photographer Kevin Macintosh took the shot.

Winter season

Winter Season

For the next season we created a world from the iconography of Tosca and Onegin. Using the concept of memory, our concept plays on fleeting moments in time and distorted recollections.

In the background the “cabinet of dreams” represents Director of Opera Kasper Holten’s vision of missed opportunities and dreams filed away and then re-played in our minds as we imagine what our past might have been. Again we worked alongside Daryl McGregor and Kevin Macintosh.

Spring season

Spring Season

Three productions are represented in this visual: La Bayadere, The Magic Flute, and Gloriana. The starting point for the creative was the theme of identity as viewed through the lens of a play.

The scenes within a scene inform the idea of a play within an ‘extraordinary world’; a glimpse behind the artifice of performance that reveals another space. We worked with photographer Tim Gutt and Tim Walker’s set designer Shona Heath.

Summer season

Summer Season

The Importance Of Being Earnest and Hansel & Gretel were the two productions that inspired the Summer Season artwork. The figures featured allude to characters in these productions, but also reach beyond that into a new, imagined, extraordinary narrative.

Like its predecessors the aim with this creative was to illustrate a unifying contemporary fashion aesthetic and appeal to the widest demographic of audiences possible. Again we worked with Tim Gutt and Shona Heath on the visual articulation for the concept.

Campaign Highlights

AKA manage and optimise the Royal Opera House’s Google Grant benefiting the organisation with free additional PPC year on year.

Creative developed using AB testing proved four times more effective than Royal Opera House digital that did not utilise this process.

For our digital display campaigns, the average click through rate was 50% higher and produced 350% more conversions than the industry standard.

Since our appointment, we have secured over 20 partnerships that have delivered over 450% of additional value compared to investment.

In the 2013/2014 season, we achieved over 500 million impressions through our advertising campaigns, while 26 productions exceeded their original sales targets.